David Clayton-Thomas | Biography, Albums, Streaming Links | AllMusic David Clayton-Thomas Biography by John Bush The lead singer for Blood, Sweat & Tears' most popular incarnation was born in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England, in 1941, the son of a Canadian soldier who served in World War II. David Clayton-Thomas… David Clayton-Thomas - The Canadian Encyclopedia email MLA 7th Edition Jeff Bateman And Peter Goddard "David Clayton-Thomas" The Canadian Encyclopedia. Eds. Andrew Mcintosh. Toronto: Historica Canada, 2008. Web. 20 Jan. 2017. Jeff Bateman And Peter Goddard "David Clayton-Thomas" The Canadian Encyclopedia. Eds. Andrew Mcintosh. Toronto: Historica Canada, 2008. Web. 20 Jan. 2017. APA 6th Edition Jeff Bateman And Peter Goddard, R. The Canadian Encyclopedia. (2008). David Clayton-Thomas. Retrieved January 20, 2017, from Jeff Bateman And Peter Goddard, R. The Canadian Encyclopedia. (2008). David Clayton-Thomas.

Retrieved January 20, 2017, from Chicago 16th Edition Jeff Bateman And Peter Goddard. "David Clayton-Thomas" In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada, 1985–. Article published January 29, 2008. Jeff Bateman And Peter Goddard. "David Clayton-Thomas" In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada, 1985–. Article published January 29, 2008. Turabian Jeff Bateman And Peter Goddard. 2008. David Clayton-Thomas. The Canadian Encyclopedia (accessed January 20, 2017). Jeff Bateman And Peter Goddard. 2008. David Clayton-Thomas. The Canadian Encyclopedia (accessed January 20, 2017). While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Updates? Omissions? Article suggestions? We want to hear from you!

David Clayton-Thomas David Clayton-Thomas (born David Henry Thomsett), singer, songwriter, producer (born 13 September 1941 in Surrey, England). David Clayton-Thomas (born David Henry Thomsett), singer, songwriter, producer (born 13 September 1941 in Surrey, England). An aggressive yet sensitive singer with a robust, soulful voice, Juno and Grammy Award winner David Clayton Thomas was a pioneer on the Canadian music scene in the 1960s and maintained a long solo career, but is perhaps best-known as the lead singer of the American jazz-rock group Blood, Sweat & Tears. He has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame and Canada’s Walk of Fame. His work has been recognized by the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. Early Years The son of a Canadian soldier and an English music student, Clayton-Thomas was born in England and moved with his family to the Toronto suburb of Willowdale when he was four. He received some musical education from his mother, but a troubled relationship with his abusive father led him to run away at age 15.

He spent his teen years living on the street and in various reformatories — including the Guelph Reformatory and the Burwash Correctional Centre near Sudbury — doing time as a serial offender for vagrancy, petty theft and street fighting. Singing in his cell earned him fans among his fellow inmates and, after teaching himself to play an abandoned guitar, he was soon performing jailhouse concerts. He was released in 1962 and began performing as Sonny Thomas (later David Clayton-Thomas) on Toronto’s Yonge Street strip, where he developed a reputation as a tough, brawling blues singer. John Lee Hooker became his idol and Ronnie Hawkins his mentor. The music of jazz greats Lenny Breau , Oscar Peterson and Moe Koffman was equally influential.

Early Bands Clayton-Thomas’s first band, David Clayton-Thomas and The Fabulous Shays (later The Shays), was an R&B outfit that had hits in 1964 with “Out of the Sunshine” and “Walk That Walk,” a rendition of Hooker’s “Boom Boom.” They opened for the Rolling Stones at Maple Leaf Gardens and played the NBC-TV variety program “Hullabaloo” (1965) at the invitation of host Paul Anka . After The Shays broke up, Thomas played solo in Toronto’s Yorkville coffeehouses and sat in with his hero, Hooker, at the Riverboat . He then joined the Bossmen, which featured the prodigious jazz pianist Tony Collacott. The Bossmen was one of the first rock bands to incorporate jazz elements, and had a Top 20 Canadian hit in the summer of 1966 with the fiercely political, anti- Vietnam War song “Brainwashed.” After the Bossmen broke up, he formed the David Clayton-Thomas Combine with former Bossmen guitarist Jack Mowbray.

They released two singles through Arc Records , one of which had the original version of Clayton-Thomas’s “Spinning Wheel” as a B-side. He was then invited to New York by Hooker, and spent two years playing clubs in Greenwich Village before being deported for having a criminal record and working illegally in the US. Blood, Sweat & Tears In 1968, Blood, Sweat & Tears drummer Bobby Colomby, who had met Clayton-Thomas in New York through folk singer Judy Collins, asked Clayton-Thomas to be the band’s new lead singer. The group’s first album with Thomas, Blood, Sweat & Tears (1968), earned wide critical acclaim and sold one million copies in the US within three months of its release. The singles “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy,” “And When I Die” and “Spinning Wheel” all hit No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The band headlined Woodstock; and the album, which won three Grammy Awards including Album of the Year (beating out the Beatles’ Abbey Road), spent 109 weeks on the Billboard top album chart (including 13 weeks at No.

1) and sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. In 1970, Blood, Sweat & Tears became the first rock band to break through the Iron Curtain and perform in Eastern Europe, which they did at the request of the US State Department in exchange for a permanent residency visa for Clayton-Thomas. They also toured throughout North America, played regular stints in Las Vegas and contributed music to the soundtrack of the Barbara Streisand movie The Owl and the Pussycat (1970). These activities, however, hurt the band’s image within the counterculture that had initially supported it. The cover-song heavy Blood, Sweat & Tears 3 was released in late 1970. Though not as well received as its predecessor, it topped the Billboard album chart and was certified gold in the US on the strength of the Top 40 US singles “Hi-De-Ho” and Clayton-Thomas’s “Lucretia MacEvil.” Blood, Sweat & Tears 4 (1971) also went gold and broke the Top 10 of the Billboard album chart, but marked the beginning of the band’s commercial decline.

1970s Solo Work Frustrated with the band’s infighting and grueling touring schedule, Clayton-Thomas left Blood, Sweat and Tears in early 1972 to work as a solo artist. He released the tepidly received albums David Clayton-Thomas (1972), Tequila Sunrise (1973) and Harmony Junction (1974), and worked regularly in Las Vegas. In 1973, he received a special Juno Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Canadian Music Scene. Return to Blood, Sweat & Tears He returned to Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1974 and assumed leadership in 1976, shepherding the band through many changes in membership. Following the dissolution of the band after the death of saxophonist Gregory Herbert in 1979, Clayton-Thomas assembled an entirely new lineup consisting of Canadian musicians, including bassist David Piltch , keyboardist Joe Sealy and trumpeter Bruce Cassidy, and released the more funk-oriented Nuclear Blues (1980).

He secured legal rights to the name Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1984, and toured with an ever-evolving roster of players until 2004. Solo Work: 1990s–2000s In addition to his 1970s solo albums, Clayton-Thomas has released Blue Plate Special (1997), The Christmas Album (2001), Aurora (2005), In Concert: A Musical Biography (2005) — recorded live at the Opera House in Toronto, The Evergreens (2007), Spectrum (2009), Soul Ballads (2010) and A Blues for the New World (2013). In recent years, Clayton-Thomas has become an advocate for prisoner’s rights. In 2010 he survived a serious heart attack, played Massey Hall with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and contributed a track to the World Jazz for Haiti charity album in support of the Red Cross earthquake relief fund, which also featured Jane Bunnett , John McDermott , Holly Cole and the Shuffle Demons . That year also saw the publication of his autobiography, Blood, Sweat and Tears.

Awards David Clayton-Thomas | Award winning singer, songwriter and author 10. I’LL NEVER SMILE AGAIN – Ruth Lowe 11. SPINNING WHEEL – David Clayton-Thomas 12. CLOSER TO THE HEART – Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, Neil Peart, Peter Talbot 13. SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT – Shirley Eikhard Buy on iTunes The History David Clayton-Thomas began his amazing journey as a homeless street kid and developed into one of the most recognizable voices in music, to date selling over 40 million records. In 1996 he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and in 2007 his jazz/rock composition “Spinning Wheel” was enshrined in the Songwriter’s Hall Of Fame. In 2010 David received his star on Canada’s Walk Of Fame. His 1968 debut album with Blood Sweat & Tears sold 10 million copies worldwide. The self-titled record topped the Billboard album chart for seven weeks, and charted for a staggering 109 weeks.

It won an unprecedented five Grammy awards, including Album Of The Year and Best Performance By A Male Vocalist. It featured three hit singles, “You Made Me So Very Happy” “And When I Die”,” and “Spinning Wheel” as well as an irresistible rendition of Billie Holiday’s “God Bless The Child” that became a signature song for David. A 1969 summary in the Los Angeles Times proclaimed that “Blood Sweat & Tears just may be the most important pop music group of the decade”. He was born David Henry Thomsett in Surrey, England, on Sept, 13, 1941. His father Fred Thomsett, was a Canadian soldier, his mother Freda, a British music student. After the war, the family settled in Willowdale, a suburb of Toronto. From the beginning David and his father had a troubled relationship. By the time David was fourteen he left home, sleeping in parked cars and abandoned buildings, stealing food and clothing to survive. A tough, angry street kid with a hair-trigger temper, it wasn’t long before he ran afoul of the law and was arrested several times for vagrancy, petty theft and street brawls.

He spent his teen years bouncing in and out of various jails and reformatories. David inheirited a love for music from his mother and when a battered old guitar came into his possession, left behind by an outgoing inmate, he began to teach himself to play. Before long he was singing and playing at jailhouse concerts and for the first time in his life, he found acceptance. Now he had a dream and his life had direction… he put the reformatory years behind him and he never looked back. When he was released in 1962, he gravitated to the Yonge Street “strip” in Toronto. “The “strip” was a bawdy six block long stretch of bars and strip joints populated by a rough crowd of hustlers and hookers, catering to a rowdy clientelle of steelworkers, truckers and miners, in town for the weekend, looking to blow off steam along with their pay cheques. Rhythm & Blues, migrating up from Detroit and Chicago was the music of choice on the strip and Arkansas rockabilly Rompin Ronnie Hawkins, with his band “The Hawks” reigned supreme. Hawkins recognized the formidable talent of the young singer and took him under his wing.

It wasn’t long before he was fronting his own bands. The first was called “David Clayton-Thomas and The Fabulous Shays.” By this time David had changed his name to put some distance between his new life and his troubled teenage years. In 1964 David and The Shays recorded a smoky, funky rendition of John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom.” It was only a regional hit but it had a vocal that stopped you in your tracks. This led to the Shays going to New York to appear on NBC-TV’s “Hullabaloo” at the invitation of its host, fellow Canadian Paul Anka. David fell in love with New York City. “We had three days there, and I spent every spare moment in Greenwich Village,” he recalls. “I saw the young Jimi Hendrix, Ritchie Havens, Carole King and James Taylor.

“I went back to Toronto but life wasn’t ever the same.” Abandoning the bars on the strip, David began performing on Yorkville Village’s bustling coffeehouse scene, His bar band soon drifted away, there was no money on Yorkville, but David hung in, playing solo, soaking up influences from the great bluesmen, John Lee Hooker, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, Joe Williams and Lonnie Johnson. He immersed himself in the local jazz & blues scene, attracted by the superb musicianship of Lenny Breau, Oscar Peterson and Moe Koffman, jazz players of dizzying technical prowess. David made his mark more forcibly with his next band, The Bossmen… one of the first rock bands anywhere to incorporate jazz musicians. In 1966, he wrote the explosive anti-war song “Brainwashed” a jazz piano/rock guitar roar of fear and refusal, tougher than any rock recording you can name from the era. It rocketed to number one nationally and dominated the Canadian charts for an amazing sixteen straight weeks. One night in 1966 after “sitting in” with blues singer John Lee Hooker in Yorkville, David left with him for New York.

Hooker soon departed for Europe and David stayed on in New York City. “I survived by playing basket houses” performers were given a few minutes of stage time and then passed the basket. Folk singer Judy Collins heard David one night at a club uptown and told her friend, drummer Bobby Colomby about him. Bobby’s band, Blood Sweat & Tears, torn apart by infighting, had broken up four months after releasing its debut Columbia album, “Child Is Father To The Man” and the band was being written off by everybody. Bobby invited David to help rebuild his shattered band. “We never heard anyone sing like that” Colomby recalls. They took the reformed group into the Café Au Go Go in the Village. Six weeks later, there were lines of people around the block, waiting to get into a club which only seated about 200 people. In his 1974 autobiography, “Clive: Inside the Record Business”, Clive Davis, then president of Columbia Records, described his initial impression of hearing David Clayton-Thomas at the Café Au Go Go: “He was staggering… a powerfully built singer who exuded an enormous earthy confidence. He jumped right out at you.

I went with a small group of people, and we were electrified. He seemed so genuine, so in command of the lyric… a perfect combination of fire and emotion to go with the band’s somewhat cerebral appeal. I knew he would be a strong, strong figure.” With David largely dominating the creative output, BS&T continued with a string of hit albums, including “Blood Sweat & Tears 3” which featuring such highpoints as David’s “Lucretia MacEvil,” and Carole King’s “Hi-De-Ho,” and “BS&T 4” which yielded another Clayton-Thomas penned hit single, “Go Down Gamblin’.” Blood Sweat & Tears’ “Greatest Hits” album has to date chalked up over seven million copies in worldwide sales. BS&T headlined at major venues around the world… Royal Albert Hall, The Metropolitan Opera, The Hollywood Bowl, Madison Square Garden and Caesar’s Palace, as well as the Newport Jazz Festival and Woodstock. It was the first contemporary band to break through the Iron Curtain with its historic 1970 tour of Eastern Europe.

In the early years David lived on the road, traveling all over Europe, Australia, Asia, South America, the US and Canada with BS&T. But the constant touring began to take it’s toll… David left the band in 1972, exhausted by life on the road. By the mid-70’s the founding members began to drift away to start families and pursue their own musical ambitions. One by one they were replaced by such notable jazz players as Joe Henderson, Jaco Pastorius and Mike Stern. His departure left a gaping hole in the group, which fumbled through personnel changes. The fans simply would not accept a BS&T without David Clayton-Thomas. “No matter how interesting we tried to make the music, audiences still wanted to hear David Clayton-Thomas” BS&T guitarist Steve Katz told Downbeat Magazine at the time. After a three year hiatus he returned and the band came storming back to the concert stages of the world. Headlining international jazz festivals, concert halls and casino show rooms with David and a line-up of top-notch New York City session musicians.

He was the only one left from the glory years, but it was David Clayton-Thomas that the fans came to see, and he continued to tour successfully under the BS&T name until 2004. Today, living back in Toronto, his boyhood turf and the place where he still feels most at home, David has launched a 10 piece band under his own name. Through the years, he has lost none of the attributes that have made him one of the greatest vocalists of his generation. That unmistakable voice now soaring and sunny, now a dark, somber shade of blue. He still just sings the hell out of a song. “People like me don’t retire,” says David with his face in a wide grin around those storied, steel-blue eyes.”This is what I was put here to do”. With the BS&T years now behind him, look for an outpouring of new music from this gifted and fiercely creative artist. Autobiography Blood, Sweat and Tears by David Clayton-Thomas There was a time when David Clayton-Thomas seemed an unlikely success story.

As a teenager in Willowdale, Ontario, his frequent clashes with his authoritarian father led to his living on the streets by the time he was 14, then spending the rest of his youth bouncing in and out of jails and reformatories. But when a battered, old mail-order guitar was left to him by an outgoing inmate, Clayton-Thomas discovered a talent for music that allowed him to believe in a different kind of life. This is the remarkable story of his journey to international stardom as the legendary front man for Blood, Sweat & Tears. In his brutally truthful memoir, Clayton-Thomas reveals what it was like to headline at Woodstock, to tour behind the Iron Curtain, to watch brilliant musicians tear their own band apart with in-fighting, and to make his fortune only to lose it all … and start all over again. This is a story of grit, courage, and determination. It is, above all, a story of survival.

David Clayton-Thomas | Download Music, Tour Dates & Video | eMusic Biography All Music Guide All Music Guide: The lead singer for Blood, Sweat & Tears' most popular incarnation was born in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England, in 1941, the son of a Canadian soldier who served in World War II. David Clayton-Thomas grew up in a suburb of Toronto; living in a difficult family environment, he left home as a teenager and began his musical career at age 23 in the Shays. They became the Bossmen in 1965 and released "Brainwashed" in 1966. After Al Kooper left Blood, Sweat & Tears following the release of Child Is Father to the Man in early 1968, Clayton-Thomas was added to the BS&T lineup as the new frontman/singer, and the group scored a major hit with the Blood, Sweat & Tears album released in January of the following year. The band's hit-filled eponymous sophomore album won the 1969 Grammy for Album of the Year.

While singing in BS&T during the late '60s and early '70s, Clayton-Thomas began a solo career, releasing self-titled albums for Decca (1969), Columbia (1972), and RCA (1973). A re-formed version of Blood, Sweat & Tears featuring Clayton-Thomas appeared in 1980, signed to MCA, and released Nuclear Blues. Related Artists Interview With David Clayton Thomas Blood, Sweat And Tears' David Clayton Thomas There are singers and then there are singers. David Clayton Thomas, now there is a singer! David was the lead singer of Blood, Sweat And Tears. When David came on board as the group's singer, their first album resulted in three Gold singles and three Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Award for Album Of The Year. That album featured David's song "Spinning Wheel", which became a Billboard #2 hit for the group. In 1996, David was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall Of Fame. In 2002, the first Blood, Sweat And Tears album that David was on was honored with a Grammy Hall Of Fame Award.

In 2006, "Spinning Wheel" was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall Of Fame. In 2002 he received a star on Canada's Walk Of Fame. David Clayton Thomas talked with us about his life, both on and off the stage. Q - David, your voice is so unique. I think what makes it unique is your phrasing. When you sing "You've Made Me So Very Happy" or "And When I Die", I believe every word you're saying. You're not just singing a song. You're almost relaying a personal story. And the song never sounds old! A - That's what a singer tries to do. Q - That is kind of unique in Pop music, isn't it? You would agree with that, wouldn't you? A - Well, I think especially today when the lyric is not as meaningful as it was in the day that songs like that were written. When Laura Nyro wrote "And When I Die", it came out of an era of (Bob) Dylan and Lennon And McCartney. The songs had real meaning. Today, they're basically music tracks for a dance studio. So, the lyric doesn't have the same meaning.

It doesn't have the same depth. Q - You've been honored quite a bit in Canada, but how about the U.S.? Are you in the Cleveland Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame? A - No, thankfully. (Laughs). Q - Is that the because they consider Blood, Sweat And Tears more of a Jazz group than a Rock group? A - Absolutely. Well, they put Miles Davis in. Q - So, that's not the reason. Why do you think you haven't been inducted? A - Oh, I don't know. The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame is directed by Jann Wenner and a little cabal of Rolling Stone people and who they would like to be in. Now, if The Sex Pistols are in the Rock And Role Hall Of Fame and Blood, Sweat And Tears isn't, well then I'll be very proud of that. Q - Where did you get this name of yours, David Clayton Thomas? A - Oh, way back in the bar days working in Toronto. All my Blues idols had three names, like John Lee Hooker and Lightnin' Sam Hopkins. (Laughs). So, I came up with that one.

Q - This first group you were in, The Bossmen, was that a cover group or an original group? A - We were writing original material. We had the longest running number one single in Canada back in the early 1960s. It was called "Brainwashed". It was the first band to actually use Jazz musicians in a raw context. Very much The Bossmen led to me going to New York and hooking up with people like Randy Brecker and Bobby Colomby and getting involved with the first Blood, Sweat And Tears. Q - Did you have five Gold Records with The Bossmen? A - No. I had five number one records, but they were with two different bands, The Shays and The Bossmen. Q - Why did you leave The Bossmen? A - I basically left Canada to go to New York because I was working in an area called the Yorkville Village. It was very much an extension of Greenwich Village. A lot of the singer / songwriters that worked in the Village here and New York kind of interchanged. Joni Mitchell would play here and then she would go down to New York.

People like Lonnie Johnson, John Lee Hooker, they would play in the Village of New York and came up to play Yorkville Village. So, there was a lot of interchange back and forth. I had been to New York once. I was very excited about it. I loved New York very dearly. I lived there for almost 40 years. In Canada, in the early 1960s, there really was no music industry. You say we had five Gold records, but to get a Gold record in Canada in those days you had to sell 10,000 copies. There was just no music industry up here. So, most of the people who worked in the Yorkville area, the Yorkville Village, myself, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, John Kay, we all left and went to the States. Some went to New York, some went to L.A. I chose New York 'cause that's where all the Jazz players were. Q - You are on Hullabaloo with The Shays? A - Yeah. That was my first trip to New York. That was the first time I ever went to New York. Paul Anka brought us down to play Hullabaloo.

We had four days in New York City and I was hooked. I really wanted to get back there. I ended up spending close to 40 years, as I said, in New York. Q - Do you remember who else was on that show with you? A - No. (Laughs). Paul Anka. Q - You were on that show because you had a hit record? A - Yeah we had a number one record in Canada. Probably sold to immediate relatives and 12 other people. (Laughs). Q - It was enough to get you on the show. Hullabaloo was a big deal here in the States. A - Oh, it was a huge deal. We were the first Canadian band to ever be asked to go and play on a network show in the United States. It made a lot of news in Canada. Q - After taping the show, you went to Greenwich Village and saw Jimi Hendrix? A - Among other people. You gotta realize in those years, Jimi Hendrix, James Taylor, Carole King, Laura Nyro, they were just folks working down on Blecker Street in little clubs. You could go into any club any night and see all these people.

They weren't famous at that time. They were just starving musicians like the rest of us. Q - Some accounts have you watching these people. Other accounts have you on the same bill. Was it both? A - Oh, we played all the same clubs. They were called basket houses. They were all over Greenwich Village and basically you just stood in line with a bunch of other singer / songwriters and they let you sing a couple of songs and passed the basket. Then you'd move onto the next club. That's how we kept ourselves in rent money in those days. So sure, it's hard to call it headlining. The clubs seated probably about 22 people. They were just little hole-in-the-wall joints. Basket houses. We all started out there. Great songwriters like Tim Hardin and James Taylor, they were all just working up and down the street. I first saw Carole King at The Bitter End, which probably holds about 30 people packed to the rafters. Q - Fast-forward to Woodstock. What did you think of that Festival? A - It was really chaotic. I guess you didn't read my book then? Q - I'm sorry, I haven't.

A - There's a lot in there. I have a couple of chapters on Woodstock. It was a very chaotic and crazy thing and history was right, if you remember Woodstock, you weren't there. Q - How long did it take you to write "Lucretia Mac Evil"? A - That song? I don't remember. That was back in the bars. I have over 400 songs in my catalog to date. A lot of them were written before I joined Blood, Sweat And Tears. "Spinning Wheel" and "Lucretia" were both written before I joined Blood, Sweat And Tears. They were written for my bar band in Canada. I took them down to New York with me and Blood, Sweat And Tears recorded them. Q - So, you don't remember if they came fast to you or you had to slave over the lyrics and music? A - Well, songs are basically an evolution. I probably carried "Lucretia" around in my guitar case for two years, half finished. I probably truly didn't finish it until I recorded it with Blood, Sweat And Tears. Q - Is it true you were living on the streets when you were 14? A - That's true.

Q - Didn't you have to go to school? A - Not really. I dropped out at Grade 9 and basically I was on the street when I was 15. Q - In the U.S. you can drop out when you're 16. When you are 14, the school sends their truant officer after you, to your house, to find out where you are. A - It depends on what part of town you live in., A lot of 14-year-old kids in Harlem and the South Side of Chicago are on the streets at 14 just like I was. Q - What did you do for food and shelter back then? You weren't singing in clubs. A - You just scuffled. You just got by from day to day. Q - At one point you were doing 300 concerts a year with Blood, Sweat And Tears. A - Oh, yeah. I did that close to 40 years, until 2004 when I finally packed it up with Blood, Sweat And Tears and left New York and moved back to Toronto. In excess of 200 concerts every year. That's how they made their living, by being on the road all the time.

Q - That's a lot of road work! A - Yes, it is. That's why I'm not doing it anymore. Q - It was reported you made a fortune, only to lose it. Were you ripped off by a manager or a record company? A - Wasn't everybody? Q - In the 1960s? Yes. A - (Laughs). Q - I take it back. There was one guy who wasn't ripped off. A - Who was that? Q - Dave Clark of The Dave Clark Five. He owned all the masters to his records. In 1964, you didn't have guys doing that. A - No, you didn't. Q - So he was ahead of his time. A - I own (my Masters) mine now. It took a few years to learn. Q - Do you still performed Blood, Sweat And Tears songs? A - Well, my own songs. They're mostly songs that I wrote. So of course they're still part of my show. If I was to do a show and people were to buy tickets and I didn't do "Spinning Wheel" or "God Bless The Child", I think they'd ask for their money back.

(Laughs). We have a very successful new album out right now. It's doing very, very well, Universal Music. We're really excited about it. We've been playing it for the last six months. But I don't do a lot of concerts anymore. I'm only doing two concerts this year (2013). I'm doing a big concert in Canada called Festival Of Friends, which is in Hamilton, Ontario. There will be about 12,000 people. Then I'm playing the big Muddy Blues Festival in St. Louis. Those are the only two concerts I'm doing this year. My life is not consistent with going out on the road anymore. Q - I guess you had your fill of it. A - I still love doing it, but going on the road and doing concerts are two different things. Doing a concert like the big Muddy Blues Festival that I played before, but it's a great Festival. Going on the road playing Indian reservation casinos five nights a week to pay the band and put gas in the bus and make sure the manager gets the money he needs, no. I don't do that anymore.

I much more enjoy writing, being in the studio, being involved with my foundation, which is the Pine River Foundation, which I do a lot of work with now. It's a foundation that goes towards helping intervening with the young 15-year-old kids who are on the streets, basically kids like myself. We provide early education. You asked how I could drop out of school. Well, it's very easy. If nobody cares about you, you're on the street. Trust me, there's a lot of kids nobody cares about. Hence, Pine River Foundation. I do fundraisers. It's much more rewarding for me than going out touring and doing oldies shows. I work with the Pine River Foundation to give back and do something for these kids that are thrown out and nobody cares about. We have a 200 acre camp about 90 miles North of Toronto. It is staffed by PhD's, doctors, counselors, teachers. We currently have a student body of about 60 kids. They go up there for about a year and a half to two years. It's a program that follows them right through graduating high school and into college. The families are involved with the program.

They're not swept into the reformatory system the way I was and supervised by jail guards. They're supervised and mentored by professionals. Part of my role is I set up a music program for Pine River. We found some very talented kids already, guitar players, sax players, singers. We built a music cabin. We're mentoring a lot of these talented kids. Sometimes the most troubled kids are the brightest and the most sensitive and the most artistic. So, we're encouraging that. David Clayton-Thomas on Apple Music To preview a song, mouse over the title and click Play. Open iTunes to buy and download music. Biography The lead singer for Blood, Sweat & Tears' most popular incarnation was born in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England, in 1941, the son of a Canadian soldier who served in World War II. David Clayton-Thomas grew up in a suburb of Toronto; living in a difficult family environment, he left home as a teenager and began his musical career at age 23 in the Shays. They became the Bossmen in 1965 and released "Brainwashed" in 1966.

After Al Kooper left Blood, Sweat & Tears following the release of Child Is Father to the Man in early 1968, Clayton-Thomas was added to the BS&T lineup as the new frontman/singer, and the group scored a major hit with the Blood, Sweat & Tears album released in January of the following year. The band's hit-filled eponymous sophomore album won the 1969 Grammy for Album of the Year. While singing in BS&T during the late '60s and early '70s, Clayton-Thomas began a solo career, releasing self-titled albums for Decca (1969), Columbia (1972), and RCA (1973). A re-formed version of Blood, Sweat & Tears featuring Clayton-Thomas appeared in 1980, signed to MCA, and released Nuclear Blues. ~ John Bush Top Albums David Clayton-Thomas interview by Knoxville News Used by kind permission of The Knoxville News-Sentinel A trail of Blood, Sweat & Tears from Woodstock to the symphony halls. David Clayton-Thomas says symphony musicians seem appreciative when they see the scores written for shows with Blood, Sweat & Tears.

"They open the book and go 'Great, here's some real music!'" says Clayton-Thomas. "I've seem some pops performances before where the symphony is just a big lush pad behind the band or the singer. That's not the case with us." Clayton-Thomas says that when Blood, Sweat & Tears performs with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Saturday, May 8, at the Civic Coliseum, the orchestra will be featured on some challenging work. It shouldn't be a surprise, considering Blood, Sweat & Tears' origins. Since the 1960s, the New York-based group has always been filled with a collection of classically and jazz educated musicians. Although singer Clayton-Thomas is the only member from the band's hit-making heyday still with the group, the band continues to employ an educated combination of musicians. Trumpeter/musical director Steve Guttman, who has been with the band since 1983 is a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory of Music and has led the group through performances with symphonies all over the country. Although few remember, Blood, Sweat & Tears recorded one album before Clayton-Thomas joined the group.

Producer/performer Al Kooper formed the group in New York in 1967 and the group's debut "Child Is the Father To the Man" was a critical success and a commercial flop. Disagreements forced lead singer Kooper from the group and transplanted Canadian Clayton-Thomas was recruited to take his place. "I came from the world of rock 'n' roll into a world of Julliard graduates," says Clayton-Thomas. It was more "rock 'n' roll" than most knew. Clayton-Thomas grew up in reformatories and foster homes, the reasons for which he says are private and in the past. "I was on my own since I was 14," says Clayton-Thomas. "I slept in parked cars, whatever. In 1958, you find a kid sleeping in cars what do you do with him? 'Put him in jail for about six months, make a man out of him.'" Yet, it was in one reformatory that Clayton-Thomas picked up a guitar left behind by a former inmate and found his niche. In his early 20s, Clayton-Thomas became a regular in Toronto rock and R&B bands.

"There was a bohemian area of Toronto called Yorkville," says Clayton-Thomas. "Neil Young was there, Joni Mitchell ..." After sitting in with the likes of Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson, who were in Ronnie Hawkins' band The Hawks, Clayton-Thomas formed a band called The Bossmen. The group recorded a cover of John Lee Hooker's "Boom Boom," which went to No. 1 on local radio charts. The group followed that hit with his own compositions "Walk That Walk" and "Brainwashed," which both went to No. 1 on the Canadian national charts. Clayton-Thomas says there is actually some correlation between The Bossmen and the band were would record with later. He says the guitar parts in the band were written in the style of horns." Maybe it was being ready that made things click quite so fast for the group. The band's first effort with Clayton-Thomas produced three million-selling hits, won three Grammys (including Album of the Year), and eventually sold more than 7 million copies.

While the distinctive combination of Clayton-Thomas' soulful vocals blending with a tight horn section is what sold the group, one of the underappreciated things that set Clayton-Thomas apart was the fact that he put his vocal trademark on so many songs written by women. The group's first hit "You've Made Me So Very Happy" was a Motown nugget by Brenda Holloway. "Hi-De-Ho" was a Carole King number and even though it wasn't a hit, Clayton-Thomas is one of the few singers to make Billie Holiday's classic "God Bless the Child" his own. "A lot of my idols growing up were girl singers," says Clayton-Thomas. He recalls that one of the group's biggest hits came from the girlfriend of B,S &T bassist Jim Fielder. The band was fishing around for material for that first post-Kooper album when Fielder told the group to listen to his girlfriend's songs. "So she sat down at this piano and sang all these incredible songs," says Clayton-Thomas. "And When I Die,' 'He's A Runner,' 'Stoney End' ...

And, of course her name was Laura Nyro." Nyro later became one of the most respected singer-songwriters of the era. Clayton-Thomas says it was not unusual that such talent was sitting right under the group's nose. "It was all around," says Clayton-Thomas, describing the scene in New York City's Greenwich Village. "We worked at the Caf� Au Go-Go. Upstairs Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention would be playing; across the street would be the Flying Machine (James Taylor's group); and down the street was Jimmy James and the Blue Flames (Jimi Hendrix's early band). Clayton-Thomas has good memories of the era, but aspect does still rankle him -- the fact that so many people think the band didn't perform at Woodstock. "I've had to explain that to everyone, including my daughter," says Clayton-Thomas. "We were not in the movie or on the record, but neither was Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead or The Band." Clayton-Thomas says that following the festival there were so many lawsuits that original plans for the movie and album were changed.

He says the band's contracts included a clause giving them a share of the film and record receipts. "The easiest way to circumvent that was to drop those acts (from the movie and album)." "In retrospect it disappoints me to not be a part of that history, but we were lucky to get paid for that gig at all." The Blood, Sweat & Tears personnel changed greatly during the '70s. Several future jazz greats, including Don Elias, Jaco Patorious and even Joe Henderson spent time in the band. And, Clayton-Thomas spent 18 months out of the group in '72 and '73. The last original member, drummer Bobby Colomby, quit in 1976. Recently, though, Clayton-Thomas has been hard at work on a solo album called "Bloodlines," which will feature several former members of the band.

"I just started casting around for musicians and calling the A-list musicians in New York and realized that half of them had played in Blood, Sweat & Tears at one time or another." David Clayton Thomas - Listen to Free Music by David Clayton Thomas on Pandora Internet Radio more David Clayton Thomas The lead singer for Blood, Sweat & Tears' most popular incarnation was born in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England, in 1941, the son of a Canadian soldier who served in World War II. David Clayton-Thomas grew up in a suburb of Toronto; living in a difficult family environment, he left home as a teenager and began his musical career at age 23 in the Shays. They became the Bossmen in 1965 and released "Brainwashed" in 1966. After Al Kooper left Blood, Sweat & Tears following the release of Child Is Father to the Man in early 1968, Clayton-Thomas was added to the BS&T lineup as the new frontman/singer, and the group scored a major hit with the Blood, Sweat & Tears album released in January of the following year.

The band's hit-filled eponymous sophomore album won the 1969 Grammy for Album of the Year. While singing in BS&T during the late '60s and early '70s, Clayton-Thomas began a solo career, releasing self-titled albums for Decca (1969), Columbia (1972), and RCA (1973). A re-formed version of Blood, Sweat & Tears featuring Clayton-Thomas appeared in 1980, signed to MCA, and released Nuclear Blues. ~ John Bush David Clayton-Thomas | Album Discography | AllMusic David Clayton-Thomas Biography by John Bush The lead singer for Blood, Sweat & Tears' most popular incarnation was born in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England, in 1941, the son of a Canadian soldier who served in World War II.

David Clayton-Thomas… Plain and Fancy: David Clayton Thomas - David Clayton Thomas (1972 canada / uk, magnificent jazz rock, Repertoire digi pack remaster) Saturday, December 28, 2013 David Clayton Thomas - David Clayton Thomas (1972 canada / uk, magnificent jazz rock, Repertoire digi pack remaster) David Clayton-Thomas (born David Henry Thomsett), singer, songwriter, producer (born 13 September 1941 in Surrey, England). An aggressive yet sensitive singer with a robust, soulful voice, Juno and Grammy Award winner David Clayton Thomas was a pioneer on the Canadian music scene in the 1960s and maintained a long solo career, but is perhaps best-known as the lead singer of the American jazz-rock group Blood, Sweat & Tears. He has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame and Canada’s Walk of Fame. His work has been recognized by the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.

David Clayton-Thomas had decided that enough was enough and split with Blood, Sweat and Tears to go the solo route with 1972's David Clayton-Thomas. Aided and abetted by wide ranges of studio help, including some of his former bandmates, much of what lies within these grooves sounds very much like his old band. It includes "Magnificent Sanctuary Band" and "Sing a Song," and with it sounding so similar to BS&T, one might wonder why Thomas chose the solo route, but by doing so, he is in charge and doesn't have to rely on others to choose which songs he sings. A competent addition to the big-band rock sound so popular in the early and mid-'70s. by James Chrispell

Question: David Clayton Thomas was the lead singer with which 1960's formed rock band?
Answer: 'BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS'